The government’s silly self-induced panic, and ‘destabilization plot’

A "bomb threat" in the Senate? Nonsense.

The Presidential Security Group going on "full alert" in the face of coup talk – cuckoo talk really – from geriatric generals who’re too advanced in years to fight their way out of a paper bag? Salamabit.

What? Retired General Fortunato U. Abat declaring "I am taking over"? He couldn’t even take over a Starbucks or McCafe. He could only qualify, if he’s got a card, for a Senior Citizens’ discount. Just look at the stupid headlines generated yesterday morning by the Philippine National Police Chief’s intemperate ranting about "a seemingly elaborate and grand design at destabilization." As a consequence, we in the STAR ran the front page story: "Lomibao Confirms Destab Plot vs. GMA." The Philippine Daily Inquirer bannered in its boldest type: "PNP Vows to Quell any Coup Attempt."

Stuff and nonsense, I repeat.

Every month there’s gossip about a coup plot, by golly, and we still take this tsismis seriously. Or deliberately? First the wire-type boondoggle. Now the "destabilization plot" phoney hysteria. All to distract everybody’s attention from jueteng?

Sanamagan. There’s no need of any real "destabilization" effort. The government is doing a great job of wrecking itself – and our country’s international reputation to boot.

Who’ll invest in a nation which can’t control its motorists who drive like idiots all over the street, but even worse, the motor-mouths in our midst who keep yapping about how there’s a conspiracy to topple the government any minute.

The truth is that I went to Camp Crame Tuesday night to join our friend, PNP Director General Arturo C. Lomibao in celebrating the elevation to one-star rank, i.e. General, of another friend, PNP Chief Supt. Leopoldo "Pol" Bataoil who heads the Public Information Office. There was a live band, and all the trimmings (after thanksgiving Mass) in the Camp’s multipurpose center.

During the more than an hour we were together, after the speeches, and toasts, I told General Lomibao that the sort of thing he was saying about a "destabilization plot" was in itself destabilizing.

It reminded me of how Ninoy Aquino and all of us were arrested in September 1972, after the late President Ferdinand Marcos started fulminating about a plot to "destabilize" the government. In fact, that was the basis of the xeroxed warrants of arrest put out on us when the military intelligence officers (ISAFP) and the Metrocom (police) picked us up and dumped us into martial law prison, first in the Camp Crame gym, then in our Gulag in Fort Bonifacio.

The warrant handed to me said that "whereas a state of subversion exists, and you, wittingly or unwittingly, have contributed to that subversion," ergo, I was arrested. Is the fresh talk of "destabilization" a prelude to a GMA government crackdown too?

I even asked newly-minted General Pol Bataoil to stop issuing press releases about "destabilization." Not to put a damper on the celebration, we chatted about it in genial fashion. But I insisted that the "destab" phrase was alarming, especially to media. Also with us were Police Deputy Director General Oscar C. Calderon, acting Deputy Chief PNP for Operations (perhaps the heir apparent to the top post) and Police Director Isidro S. Lapeña, CSEE, Director for Operations.

General Lomibao told me that the press release about "destab" had been on his desk for two days, and he had hesitated to use those words.

Were the PNP top brass repentant at all? Art said he was flying to Tacloban yesterday morning. Yesterday afternoon I received Bataoil’s PNP News Release about that sortie. It was headlined: "LOMIBAO ORDERS COPS TO THWART DESTABILIZATION."

There’s no doubt now that is the GMA Administration’s party-line.

As for the Opposition noisily threatening to initiate "impeachment" proceedings against GMA, that’s what’s really alarming. If they impeach GMA, the nation will get Noli de Castro. Then it would no longer be "Magandang Gabi, Bayan." It would be, Good Night, Bayan!

* * *

Now for that wire-tap foolishness.

Our reporter Aurea Calica is normally very reliable, so I don’t think National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales was misquoted in yesterday’s article when he claimed there is no equipment in this country that can "intercept and record cellular phone conversations in the way President Arroyo’s mobile phone was reportedly tapped."

Since he’s not that dumb, Gonzales must have been speaking with tongue-in-cheek. Either he was deliberately prevaricating or guilty of abysmal ignorance. Surely he must have learned that five years ago, a bunch of police and military officers went to Europe to purchase wire-tapping devices. They finally picked listening/wiretapping devices from the United Kingdom (Britain) which cost just a bit more than P500,000 at the time. They paid for the equipment in cash so as not to leave a paper trail.

One of the suppliers even sent a representative to Manila from their European headquarters to demonstrate to a select group of PNP/AFP people how a tiny device could actually "wiretap" a cellphone between Manila and Hong Kong.

Training a listening device at someone’s cellphone is not difficult, even if the target is mobile or moving around a lot, provided the operator of the device is mobile, too. The device can be trained at a target even if the target is behind a thick wall, but it becomes a great deal easier if the target is in the open.

The device may come in different sizes, one as small as a cellphone. At the moment, according to my European "source" with whom I checked yesterday, the cheapest comes as reasonably-priced as £7,000 (pounds sterling) per unit. There are a few other elements or enhancement frills which may be added to a listening/wiretapping device, but they wouldn’t cost much extra. In terms of logistics, what would be more expensive are the men or operators involved in the effort and the means to reach the target.

There are two types of listening/wiretapping devices: analog and digital.

Since a European government sale of such a system to anyone is covered by an end-user certificate, we must assume that the Philippine government ought to have applied to the European government concerned for the "okay" to purchase the equipment. Possibly, the RP expedition which went on a shopping spree "paid" for confidentially.

It is very illegal in the UK, France, Germany and most European countries to sell wiretapping devices without a proper seller government’s authorization. Not anybody can walk in off the street and get them off the shelf. The buyers must have had the right connections to reach to "seller" of those devices. (Most often, the seller is a government’s intelligence "asset" or was part of a government’s intelligence gathering community).

Sus, even the PSG has the capability, if you want to know, of tapping their own Boss’s, GMA’s cellphone.

Did Toting Bunye’s distributed tapes and exposé about a fabricated wire-tap conversation help the GMA cause? It backfired. Hearing the tapes over and over again on radio and TV, the listening public began to believe they weren’t fabricated but genuine.

Do you think Executive Secretary Ed Ermita’s statement that he was backing up Bunye all the way helped Toting? Ermita has problems of his own. He has, if my count is accurate, no less than ten Deputy Executive Secretaries, each one of them appointed by GMA to please a certain sector.

This government is too obsessed with gaining popularity that it loses popularity – you cannot please everyone. You end up, if you try to do so, by pleasing no one.

* * *

I don’t know whether it is part of the Comedia or there’s genuine anxiety on the President’s part over a coup or "destabilization" plot, but GMA’s unscheduled visits to military camps, like Camp Aguinaldo are obviously loyalty checks, especially since the Palace denies they are. Why, the Prez even has General Art Lomibao conferring with his PNP officers over the "plot" and the need for the Republic "to defend itself," not only in Luzon but yesterday in the Visayas.

Then there’s the dinner in Malacañang tendered the other night by La Presidenta for Philippine Military Academy Class ’73.

Of course everyone in uniform will swear undying fealty to the Commander-in-Chief. But remember, the generals were reassuring ex-President Joseph "Erap" Estrada of their loyalty, including the firm support of then AFP Chief of Staff Angelo T. Reyes, just a day before they all mounted the entablado at EDSA People Power Dos to announce they had abandoned Erap.

In the end, it’s not the generals who’ll mount coups or mutinies – though such a danger is remote, if not a figment of both imagination and propaganda – but the younger officers, from the Oakwood generation to the classes of ’96, ’97, ’98, ’99, etc. Coups are never announced by advance press release. And genuine destabilization plots" are never discovered or uncovered before it’s too late. What we apparently see is a lot of belly-aching and play-acting.

No nation which indulges in endless coup-talk can ever progress. Just consider Thailand which was stagnant before their "coups" went out of fashion.

Since the end of World War II, the world has experienced almost 300 coups d’ etat or attempted coups in 76 different countries – half the sovereign states represented in the United Nations.

Of these, 155 have been successful.

Argentina and Thailand used to be the topnotchers, with Argentina beating Thailand only by a whisker. Thailand used to be plagued by periodic coups, its record came to 19 coups or aborted coup tries.

Thailand experienced a successful coup in 1951, followed by another in 1958. The next took place in 1971. There will still another one in 1976, followed by an unsuccessful attempt in 1977. The last "successful" coup took place in 1977.

During the Premiership of Gen. Prem Tinsulanonda there were two ill-starred attempts to oust Prem’s government – one in 1981 and the second in September, 1985. This writer had just landed at Bangkok’s Don Muang airport – about 25 kilometers from the city – when we heard the rattle of gunfire and the boom of cannon: the unmistakable sound of a coup in progress. It was a comparatively bloody one as Thai coups used to go. Three persons, including two foreign journalists were killed. (The tank had not actually been shooting at the foreign correspondent and the photographer killed – the shells ricocheted and killed them).

What was unique about the sad episode – the last coup attempt, by the way, to be made in that now peaceful kingdom – is that like all Thai coups, it had been aimed at booting out the Prime Minister and his government, but never the King who is loved by everybody.

There even used to be a protocol government coups. The King, we learned, had to be discreetly informed beforehand to make sure he kept himself safe and out of the line of fire. Perhaps, even his "blessing" might have been sought in advance, who knows?

In any event, there are no more coups in Thailand. Only non-stop shopping and "pirated" goods.

In our case, let’s stop all this loose talk and get back to work. The government doesn’t need conspirators, plotters, mutineers, or saboteurs to undermine it. Our government is its own worst enemy.